by Will Hobbs
As it turned out, the bed Ma Oleson had in mind for me was upstairs, where most of the two-dozen residents slept. Double bunks lined both walls; wardrobes for each man’s clothes and possessions stood back-to-back in the middle of the room with passage around both ends.
Merlin pulled a sleeping sack off an upper bunk. “We’ll have to empty his wardrobe, too.”
“Whose?”
“Elias Eriksson, a Swede.”
“Is he coming back for his things?”
“Not likely.” Merlin had a wry gleam in his eye.
“Left town in a hurry?” I joked. “Law on his heels?”
“Nothing like that. He’d been doing poorly for some time.”
“Hmm . . .” I said. “How long ago did he—”
“Expire? Just this morning. That’s why his stuff is still here.”
Sleeping in a dead man’s bunk gave me the willies, but darkness had fallen and I had no alternatives. It took us several trips to carry the man’s effects in our arms two flights down to the basement, where we left them in an empty steamer trunk. After the first load, Merlin was wheezing something awful on the stairs. I tried to talk him into letting me finish the job, but he wouldn’t have it.
After that I took advantage of the opportunity to draw a warm bath and nearly fell asleep in the tub. I climbed the end ladder to that upper bunk, slipped into my bedroll, and lay my head on the pillow. I might have fallen asleep straightaway had I not paused to consider whose pillowcase this was. My next thought was to wonder after the Swede’s cause of death.
With dread rising nearly to panic, I yanked the pillowcase off the pillow and tucked it under my bedroll. Ma had been extremely careful during Pa’s illness to make sure Till and I stayed clear of his linens and such. All the while Pa was careful to cough into his handkerchief.
Eyes closed, I listened to the men arriving from downstairs. They talked a bit as they took to their bunks. I was so possessed by fear, I didn’t register on a thing they were saying. After midnight by Pa’s watch, I was still awake and listening to the ragged breathing of the sleeping men, like hacksaws ripping metal. It sounded as if I had landed in a hospital ward.
I lay there trying not to take the stale and sickly air into my lungs. Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer and crept down the stairs to the front parlor, bedroll under my arm.
Merlin was down there reading a book, Stevenson’s Kidnapped. As I sat in an easy chair close by, his unruly, arching eyebrows asked a silent question. “Couldn’t sleep,” I said.
“Not surprised. We make a fearsome racket. Were you concerned?”
“Somewhat,” I said. I wasn’t going to say the word tuberculosis.
“It’s not TB, Owen. What I’ve got—most of us here—is silicosis, also known as ‘miners’ consumption.’ It’s the result of the rock dust we took into our lungs from the compressed air drills we used in the mines. ‘Widowmakers’ they were called, for good reason. Just lately ‘wet drills’ took their place. The new drills have a hollow center. Water under pressure shoots through the tip of the bit and keeps the rock dust down. Our days are numbered, but don’t worry, you can’t catch what we’ve got.”
10
Is That Justice?
AFTER BREAKFAST I headed for the steam laundry with my dirty clothes, and when the telegraph office opened I was waiting at the door. Ma and Till would hear from me in a couple days. Telegrams were delivered to the Hermosa store.
My report was as follows: ARRIVED IN GOOD HEALTH TELLURIDE SAT PM STOP REASON TO BELIEVE H&P HERE STOP TALK TO MARSHAL SOON STOP STAYING AT OMA OLESON’S BOARDING STOP OWEN
I was on my way out when I ran into the girl from the bakery. She was accompanied by her mother, strikingly beautiful and tall, with the same jet-black hair as her daughter. Evidently the girl had shared everything I told her at the bakery. Her mother was intensely curious about my mission in Telluride, and she was warm and welcoming.
We had a flurry of conversation, her mother and I, the girl following closely. Without a doubt the woman was taking the measure of me, trying to see into my soul, it felt like. I liked her; she reminded me of my mother. I just kept to who I was, like I’d always been taught. At the last, though, I was suddenly off balance. On the spur of the moment, her mother invited me to go to church with them. I stuttered and sputtered and finally agreed to meet them at the Congregational church.
Turning away I was mighty unhappy with myself. I’d been raised to be polite and respectful but also to stand on my own two feet. I could have politely and firmly declined.
At least I’d learned the girl’s name—Molly Dobson. Her mother’s name was Marie.
I had an hour to spend. Half of it I put to good use eyeing the mules, none of them ours, in the last of the morning’s pack trains upward bound to the mines. Then I went meandering around the streets of Telluride, nearly abandoned on a Sunday morning. More than a few drunks were sleeping it off in alleys strewn with liquor bottles. I located the marshal’s office but remembered the warning I got at the stables. I decided I better wait until I had a case to make. After church I was going to meet up with Merlin Custard at the town cemetery for the noontime funeral of Elias Eriksson. Merlin was going to show me Uncle Jacob’s grave. That would be my chance to learn about his death. Then I would rent a horse and head for the Tomboy Mine in search of Hercules.
As I approached the church at the appointed time, I spotted Molly with her parents and she gave me a quick wave. Her mother’s smile was warm, but I could see right away I was making nothing like a good impression on her father. I wondered if he was always this red in the face. Maybe his starched collar was too tight on his neck, skinny as it was. “Decker Dobson, editor of the Daily Journal,” he announced stiffly as we shook hands. “I’m not surprised that the tracks of your stolen mules led to Telluride. This town has no end of thieves and swindlers and worse. We’ve got thirty-one saloons and gambling houses, not to mention other dens of iniquity, and only two churches. Does that tell you anything?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Molly looked embarrassed. If her father noticed, it didn’t seem like he cared. “And you came here on your own?” he continued, not the least bit friendly.
“Yes, sir,” I replied. Dozens of the congregation were passing us by on their way into church. I was saved from further explanation when Molly’s mother said, “Shall we go in, Decker?”
Molly’s father took her by the arm and led the way inside. I followed alongside her mother, who whispered, “Do you have a denomination, Owen?”
“The Friends,” I whispered back. “I’m a Quaker.”
The right side of the church was near to full with townsfolk dressed in their Sunday best like the Dobsons. On the left side were men without families, dressed more like me. I was overly warm and more than uncomfortable. I went through the motions, standing up and sitting down with the congregation, but I didn’t know one hymn from another and didn’t sing along. Quakers of our traditional kind don’t sing hymns, and we don’t have a priest or a minister.
The best way to get through this, I figured, was to put myself in a meeting house state of mind. I reflected on my Inward Light, and then my family. I was remembering what we were like when Till was born, how happy Ma and Pa were, how thrilled I was at having a kid brother, Till taking his first steps, and the first time he rode a pony, all smiles. Somehow that led to the awful memory of Pa taking sick, and before long, all I could think about was our mules and our dismal situation. The crook was keeping Peaches to ride when he already had a horse. Why was that? This much I knew: the Tomboy Mine bought Hercules. I had to find him before they took him underground.
Something brought me out of my reverie. The minister was giving his sermon and was talking about the importance of acceptance, something to do with Colorado’s supreme court. A recent ruling, I gathered. From the far back and across the aisle a man cried out, “Is that justice?”
The young minister was startled. So was everybody. The whole
church was murmuring. Molly’s father, seated between us, was beside himself. I couldn’t tell if he was going to blow his top or melt into a puddle. “Socialist,” he seethed in a stage whisper. “Anarchist!”
The minister said in the direction of the voice from the back, “You’re welcome here, friend, but you’re not welcome to speak out of turn.”
One more hymn and the service was over. The church emptied out to a glorious autumn day, but nobody seemed to notice. The well-dressed folk stood buzzing in clusters as the working men drifted away. “His mistake was to bring up politics,” I heard a woman say.
I stood aside, waiting to see if Molly might explain what this was about. Suddenly her father came at me very red in the face. To shoo me away from his daughter, was all I could think. “What are you waiting for, boy? Go back to Durango!”
I replied to his conniption fit with a shrug and a smile and “It’s a free country.”
Rather than return to his wife and daughter, who’d seen and heard the above and looked mortified, the newspaperman hurried to join a heated conversation at the hitching post.
Molly said a quick something to her mother, then walked over and said, “I’m sorry my father wasn’t civil, Owen. That’s just the way he is, always angry about something. See the man he’s talking to over there? That’s Arthur Collins, the company’s superintendent at the Smuggler-Union. The other is the president of the bank. My father despises the miners even more than they do.”
Starting back to her mother, Molly said over her shoulder, “I’ll look for you tomorrow . . .”
“That’s right,” I said. “I owe you a nickel.”
I had some time on my hands before the funeral and broke one of my silver dollars at a soda fountain on Colorado Avenue. Lone Tree Cemetery is east of town before you reach Pandora, the man told me. I spent a nickel on a soda and another on the Daily Journal.
I found a bench outside and looked into this newspaper run by Molly’s father, curious if I might find something about the decision from the state’s high court. I didn’t, but spotted something about a miner toward the end of Decker Dobson’s gossip column: Just when we think we’ve had enough of anarchists and socialists we learn of a miner in Oklahoma who refused to march in a parade. Some of the crowd fell on him, beat him severely, and were about to lynch him. We applaud their patriotism. There is no better deterrent to anarchy than mob justice. To fix the problem of anarchists in America, all the anarchists should be deported to some cannibal island. We feel pity for the resident cannibals, eating such disgusting food.
I felt sorry for Molly. I tossed her father’s newspaper in the trash, where it belonged.
11
So Many Graves
HALF AN HOUR later the funeral procession was headed my way. It was led by a two-horse wagon with the remains of Elias Eriksson in a simple pine coffin. The man sitting next to the driver was Merlin Custard. The men walking behind who’d worked in the mines looked like they’d been through a war. One was missing a hand, several an arm, one of them an eye. Many were hobbling, many were coughing, all were silent and grim. At a nod from Merlin I fell in with them.
Colorado Avenue became the wagon road I had followed into town. Somehow I hadn’t noticed the cemetery on the slope above the road and below the cliffs. I was recruited to be one of the pallbearers. The pine box was lighter than I expected. Eriksson must have been a long time wasting away with miners’ consumption.
Graveside, it was Merlin who presided. His frail voice was nearly drowned out by the echoing thunder of the stamp mills up the road. “Elias was born to a large farming family in Sweden,” he began. “Like many of us, he left his native land to seek a better life in America. Many of you worked with Elias, as I did, and knew him to give every ounce of his prodigious strength until it gave out. Let it be remembered that his friends were many, that he had dreams, that he was a proud member of our union. And now his life is at an end, and we gather to say goodbye and farewell, and wish him eternal rest.”
Merlin opened his Bible. “The Lord is my shepherd,” he began, and they all joined in. Every man knew the twenty-third psalm by heart. Evidently they recited it frequently. I was so deeply moved, my voice barely escaped my lips.
Afterward Merlin took me up a winding path through the hillside cemetery. It cost him a considerable amount of wheezing and puffing but he was determined to show me where Uncle Jacob was buried. “So many graves,” I said when he stopped to rest.
Merlin nodded. “Aye, for a town with such a brief history. And plenty more are unmarked.”
As we wended our way, I read some of the nearby stones. TAKEN BY THE ELEPHANT proclaimed the letters under an Italian name, a man who lived only twenty-six years. Under a Celtic cross, the dates on a family stone told a heartbreaking story. The young mother died the day after her newborn child.
I began to wonder if Uncle Jacob had a headstone. Don’t act disappointed if he doesn’t, I told myself. Ma will take care of it. We can wire money to Merlin once I get home.
Merlin brought me back to the present. “Here he be.”
Jacob’s mound had settled and grass had mostly claimed the dirt. I was looking at his name in granite:
JACOB HOLLOWELL
Stalwart of Local 63
Kansas-born Died 2-17-1900
The brutal reality of it hit me full force. The loss of my father’s adventurous younger brother was no longer an idea in my head. The sudden horror of his death hit me full force.
Merlin was teary-eyed. “It’s a small stone, but does it please ’ee?”
“Truly,” I replied, all broken up. “Ma will be happy about this.”
“Our local paid for it,” Merlin added proudly. “Few of us could afford one.”
We sat down either side of the headstone. The view was magnificent, from the fresh-born San Miguel River to the jagged peaks above. Down the valley lay Telluride, and in the far distance, the La Sal Mountains in Utah. “Same as me,” Merlin said, “Jacob came to Colorado on his own hook, as a prospector. Both of us ended up working for wages. A man has to eat.” Suddenly Merlin had a coughing fit. It left him gasping for breath and blue in the face.
“I’m sorry,” I said when the fit subsided.
“Don’t be.”
“Your mine must help out . . .”
“How so?”
“With doctor bills and such.”
Merlin looked at me fiercely. “Not to the tune of a penny. What makes you think that?”
“The name, Smuggler-Union. Isn’t it owned by the union?”
He laughed bitterly. “A mine owned by the miners, that’ll be the day! It’s owned by a syndicate of tycoons back East. Robber barons! When you get sick or busted up, the mining companies could care less. Without help from our union, most of us at Oma Oleson’s wouldn’t have a roof over our heads.”
“So, where did the mine’s name come from?”
“Two claims, the Smuggler and the Union, combined into one. The Union was named by the prospector who made that discovery. I heard it said he fought for the Union in your Civil War. As to your uncle’s union, that’s our Western Federation of Miners. He was a member in Cripple Creek when they successfully bargained for the eight-hour day. They were the first to win it.”
“Uncle Jacob wrote about that, the same letter when he told us he was heading farther west, to Hermosa. We got a letter once a year around Christmas. In the next one we learned he’d built a house on the land and was working in a mine near Silverton. We never heard why he quit that job and went to work over here in Telluride.”
“Well, he didn’t quit. He got fired for talking miners into joining the union.”
“He never wrote about that.”
“I’m not surprised. He knew your father was bad sick, and likely didn’t want to upset him. When Jacob came over the mountain to Telluride, he tried to find work at the Tomboy, where management won’t raise wages but agreed to the eight-hour day. No luck—jobs there are hard to come by. That’s
how he ended up with us at the Smuggler-Union, where we work ten hours a day and often twelve until we remove a quota of rock—six feet high, six feet deep, and as wide as the vein. ‘Fathom mining,’ it’s called, and the veins here are unusually wide.”
Merlin coughed up some crud and hawked it contemptuously. “I worked under that system back in Cornwall. What I can’t fathom is why such a travesty of justice would be allowed in America. We thought we’d finally won the battle last year, when the state assembly passed the eight-hour workday in the mines, smelters, and blast furnaces, and the governor signed it. Then Colorado’s Supreme Court pounced on it, killed it by unanimous decision. Declared the new law unconstitutional. Ruled that working men have the right to work as many hours as they please, for as little pay as they like!”
Merlin had run out of breath. I said, “So that’s what the minister was talking about this morning.”
“Minister?”
“At church.”
He looked at me curiously. “I thought you folks were Quaker.”
“We are, but I met a girl . . .”
The old miner had a good laugh. “That explains everything! I must say, Owen, you’re a fast operator.”
I felt the blood rush to my face and was about to explain.
“More credit to you!”
“I’m trying to understand . . . Did Jacob die before or after the court made that ruling?”
“After. He found it dumbfounding. We all did. Victory was ripped from under our feet. After that the mine superintendent said there’d be no more talking with our union, not about the eight-hour day and not about our wages, working conditions, safety, any of it. Arthur Collins is his name. From England, to my shame. Won’t give an inch. Says his responsibility is to the officers and owners of the corporation, not to us.”
“So, what’s to be done?”
“That’s what we were asking ourselves. Our leaders—young Vincent St. John and your uncle Jacob—were saying we needed to consider going out on strike, and preparing. That’s when both of them became targets, I believe.”